Marcos touts ‘bloodless’ drug war, no ‘extermination’

MANILA, Philippines — President Marcos yesterday trumpeted the gains of his crackdown on illegal drugs, saying billions of pesos worth of narcotics have been seized and thousands of offenders have been arrested without resorting to “extermination,” in an apparent effort to contrast his style with that of his predecessor and critic Rodrigo Duterte.

In his third State of the Nation Address (SONA), Marcos said more than P44 billion worth of narcotics have been confiscated and 97,000 drug personalities have been arrested in more than 71,500 operations under his “bloodless war on dangerous drugs.”

“On the fight against dangerous drugs, our bloodless war on dangerous drugs adheres, and will continue to adhere, to the established eight Es of an effective anti-illegal drugs strategy. Extermination was never one of them,” the President said.

Marcos was referring to the eight Es that make up the endgame in the Duterte administration’s drug war – engineering the structure, education, extraction of information, enforcement, enactment of laws, environment, economics and evaluation.

The end game also emphasizes the reinforcement, rehabilitation, recovery and wellness and reintegration of drug offenders who surrendered, according to the Philippine National Police.

Duterte waged a brutal war against illegal drugs when he was president, a campaign that human rights advocates said had encouraged extrajudicial killing and other abusive practices. More than 6,000 drug suspects were killed under Duterte, who had claimed that the crackdown is necessary to save the next generation from crime.

Marcos, whose anti-drug campaign involves rehabilitation, reintegration and preventive education programs, had said enforcement “only gets you so far” and that police should zero in on running after people who would “make a difference” in the drug supply when arrested or sent to jail.

According to Marcos, more than 6,000 of the individuals arrested in the anti-drug efforts were high-value targets, 440 of them government employees, including 42 uniformed personnel.

“To further paralyze their operations, dirty money and assets worth more than P500 million have been frozen and preserved. With strong case build-up and efficient prosecution, the drug conviction rate is at a high of 79 percent,” the President said.

Marcos welcomed the report that the number of drug-affected barangays in the Philippines has been reduced by 32 percent. He also reported the decrease in crime rate and the improvement in crime solution efficiency but admitted that they are not enough.

“Our law enforcers need to continue to earn the trust of our people. The strong pillars of our criminal justice system, especially in light of the new rules on criminal investigation, and our independent judiciary, function in unison,” he said.

‘Not bloodless’

The Marcos administration’s campaign against illegal drugs is not “bloodless” as claimed by Marcos during his SONA, Human Rights Watch said.

HRW senior researcher Carlos Conde described Marcos’ claim as “spurious and baseless,” citing monitoring by the University the Philippines Third World Studies Center.

“More than 700 have been killed under him so far and the killings worsened in the past year compared to the year before,” Conde said.

“And by claiming several successes such as the alleged reduction in the number of villages affected by illegal drugs, we expect the ‘drug war’ violence to continue, probably even worsen,” he added.

HRW has repeatedly urged Marcos to declare an end to the so-called war on drugs, noting that the policy marked by killings continued even after the end of the Duterte administration. — Janvic Mateo